Re: [A-List] Big pig, little pig

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

I'm not sure how many direct subsidies go to swine producers in the US, but
the indirect subsidies are enormous.  I live in the state that displaced
Iowa a couple of years back for the number one position as swine producer.
The state provides massive infrastructure for integrators like Smithfield,
access to aquifers, roads and highways, discharge points, tax breaks, and
protection from regulation by classifying them as "farms."  They are not.
They are massive meat factories, called confinement facilities, and we have
the biggest slaughterhouse in the world here, in a little town called Tar
Heel, where around 35,000 hogs a day pass through.  The industry is
vetically integrated, and no producers anywhere in the less developed world
can possibly compete with them... though they themselves are looking to
build facilities in low-wage countries like Mexico.

I wrote a piece about them a few years back, that while dated, still gives
a fair description.

http://www.resistinc.org/newsletter/issues/1998/12/nccp.html